“Much of what we do at any level is a bit like that, I fancy. But hard to know which is which.”
The Paris Review interview
Context: Many writers write a great deal, but very few write more than a very little of the real thing. So most writing must be displaced activity. When cockerels confront each other and daren’t fight, they busily start pecking imaginary grains off to the side. That’s displaced activity. Much of what we do at any level is a bit like that, I fancy. But hard to know which is which. On the other hand, the machinery has to be kept running. The big problem for those who write verse is keeping the machine running without simply exercising evasion of the real confrontation. If Ulanova, the ballerina, missed one day of practice, she couldn’t get back to peak fitness without a week of hard work. Dickens said the same about his writing—if he missed a day he needed a week of hard slog to get back into the flow.
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Ted Hughes 55
English poet and children's writer 1930–1998Related quotes

Midnight Palace Interview: Mamie Van Doren, Written by Gary Sweeney

"Simone Biles Explains Withdrawal: “I Just Don’t Trust Myself As Much As I Used To” " in Slate (27 July 2021) https://slate.com/culture/2021/07/simone-biles-olympics-gymnastics-statement.html
Source: 2000s, Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World (2002), p. 133

“What we know is not much. What we do not know is immense.”
"Ce que nous connaissons est peu de chose, ce que nous ignorons est immense."
Allegedly his last words, reported in Joseph Fourier's "Éloge historique de M. le Marquis de Laplace" (1829) with the comment, "This was at least the meaning of his last words, which were articulated with difficulty." Quoted in Augustus De Morgan's Budget of Paradoxes (1866).

“What I do is play soccer, which is what I like.”